Series 03: Joseph Banks - Endeavour journal, 25 August 1768 - 12 July 1771 (vol. 2) - No. 0397
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[Page 397]
293.
Some account of New Holland
a stone made sharp at the edge & a wooden mallet were the only ones we saw that had been formd by art the use of these we supposd to be in making the notches in the bark of high trees by which they climb them for purposes unknown to us & for cutting & perhaps driving wedges to take of the bark which they must have in large peices for making Canoes, Sheilds & water buckets & also for covering their houses besides these they use shells & corals to scrape the points of their darts & polish them with the leaves of a kind of wild Fig tree (Ficus Radula) which bites upon wood almost as keenly as our European shave grass usd by the Joiners.
[Margin note] Fish hooks
their fish hooks are made of shell very neatly & some exceedlingly small their lines are also well twisted & they have them from the size of a half inch rope to almost the fineness of a hair made of some vegetable
[Margin note] Netting
of Netting they seem to be quite ignorant but make their bags the only thing of the kind we saw among them by laying the threads loop within loop something in the way of knitting only very coarse & open